2014 Formula One season (ME)
The 2014 Formula One season (Marcus Ericsson's career) was the 65th Formula One championship contested over 20 circuits in 19 countries. The season most notably saw the introduction of new environmentally-focused engines and a reshuffling of teams and drivers. Marcus Ericsson won their his second consecutive championships, and Renault won the first engine's championship, both with three races to go. The constructor's championship went down to the last round, where Lotus lead with ten points to Marussia, and eventually won. Signed teams and drivers Team changes * Sahara Force India F1 Team → Team Aethra EADS. After the German Grand Prix in 2013, Force India announced their intentions to liquidate their team come the end of the season following a string of failures. Following the Belgian Grand Prix, EADS, a Dutch sponsor of Force India, announced their interests in buying out the team. Their sponsor deal was a 7-year deal, set to end for the season. * Mercedes no longer supplying customer engines. Following shortly after Force India's liquidation announcement, Mercedes announced that they would not supply new 2014-regulation customer engines, leaving McLaren without an engine supplier. Honda and Ford hinted at an interest in developing an engine. * Renault only supplying engines to Red Bull and Lotus. Renault also announced their plans to make Red Bull and championship leader, Lotus, their equal-status works teams. Each team was given 2-year deal. This left Caterham and Williams without engine suppliers, encouraging Honda and Ford to get involved. * HRT F1 Team → Hyundai F1 Team. Following the Korean Grand Prix, HRT announced their intentions to also liquidate, leaving Nico Hulkenburg and de la Rosa without drives. They signed a 5-year deal with newcomer BMW. * McLaren: Mercedes → Honda engines. A 10-year deal was signed with Honda. * Williams: Renault → BMW engines. BMW opted to only offer a 4-year deal to Williams. * Caterham: Renault → Cosworth engines. Cosworth also signed a 4-year deal with Caterham. * EADS and Hyundai: BMW engines. Driver changes * Mark Webber retires. Prior to contract announcements, Mark Webber announced his intention to retire from Red Bull, creating a vacuum and a wave of driver contract changes. * Pastor Maldonado: Williams → Red Bull. With Mark Webber retired, Red Bull were looking for someone to replace their veteran. Hardly that, but with undoubted skill shown by his dominance over team-mate Bruno Senna, Pastor Maldonado was selected. * Nico Rosberg: Sauber → Williams. The hole Pastor Maldonado left when joining Red Bull left Nico Rosberg with a potential to drive with a team on par with his original team, Mercedes. He also showed promise and dominance over team mate Kamui Kobayashi. * Paul di Resta: Toro Rosso → Sauber. Paul di Resta was also looking to revitalize his career and join a team similar to his original one, Force India. * Jean-Eric Vergne: Caterham → Toro Rosso. Jean-Eric Vergne rejoined his original Red Bull sister team, Toro Rosso, after di Resta left for Sauber. * Ma Quinghua joins Caterham. Ma Quinghua, junior and test driver for Caterham, joined Caterham due to the vacuum left by Vergne rejoining his old team. * Sergio Perez without a drive. Sergio Perez had a dreadful 2012 and 2013 season. Added to his problems, he was only able to sign with Toro Rosso in 2013. After failing to score any points – and a contract renewal requiring 6 points – he was left without any contract offers, and was forced to retire. * Callan O'Keeffe joins Toro Rosso. Part of the Red Bull Junior Program, South African O'Keeffe was given the opportunity to drive for Toro Rosso after they didn't offer a contract renewal to Sergio Perez. He was one of five juniors to be offered a contract. * Fabio Leimer, Pedro de la Rosa and Nico Hulkenburg without a drive. Both Force India and HRT announced their liquidations during the contract negotiations, leaving their drivers uncertain of whether they'd ever drive in Formula One again. * Jaime Alguersuari and Stoffel Vandoorne join Hyundai. Veteran and novice Alguersuari and Vandoorne have joined the newly-formed Hyundai team. They hope to provide both good funds and experience. * Davide Valsecchi: Force India → EADS, Giedo van der Garde joins EADS. | |} Report The 2014 season saw engine regulations change for the first time in 7 years. 1.5 litre V6s replaced the old engines, and development was unfrozen. This resulted in a large change in teams' engine usage. To facilitate this, a third championship was introduced, the engine's championship, to promote engine manufacturers to get involved and try to monopolize usage. Marcus Ericsson, in his well-funded and improved Marussia car, dominated the first race, taking pole position, the fastest lap and the victory. Ferrari also took the engine's and constructor's trophy, the latter by the skin of their teeth – a single point. Nico Rosberg retired on his maiden race for Williams, while Karthikeyan scored an impressive 12th in his also-maiden drive for Caterham, which seemed to have been able to bridge the gap to the rear-midfield. Fernando Alonso and Marcus Ericsson continued their driver's title battle in to the next 2 races, with the latter retiring from Malaysia due to a mechanical failure, and the former scoring three podiums, though no wins. Ericsson, Ferrari, and Renault came out of the early races on top in their respective championships. Ericsson couldn't finish Monaco in such spectacular fashion as in 2012 or as dominant as 2014, planting his car in the barrier near the closing stages and giving Alonso his first win of the season. In Canada, he crashed out along the back straight in Q1, putting him at the back of the grid to start. He came to finish second – some claiming he was close to breaking the world record of a victory from so far back – behind Alonso, who had the gap closed down to two points. A record-parring seven consecutive victories from the European to the Singapore Grand Prix extended his lead to over 100 points, by which time Marussia had toppled Ferrari as leaders. Meantime, Caterham's transition in to the midfield materialized, with rookie Ma Quinghua and veteran Karthikeyan scoring their first points; Maldonado and Ricciardo had Red Bull at third in the championship, instead of their 2013 result, 5th; Sebastian Vettel struggled to gain any points with Mercedes, and claimed he would be considering moving teams had he not signed a multi-year contract; and Paul di Resta impressed at Sauber, scoring more more points than 2012 and 2013 combined. A win in Singapore meant that Ericsson could win the championship at the 15th race at Japan. Despite qualifying on pole, he struggled to get away from the pack, and a crucial error early on resulted in him having to pit early, getting stuck behind traffic, and eventually pushing too hard and retiring with a hard, straight-on impact in to edge of the the pit wall. Lotus closed the gap to Marussia down to a solitary point, while his lead in the championship was only reduced by a single point. This wasn't enough to secure the championship, but if runners-up couldn't close the gap down by seven points by the end of Korea, he would indeed have won. Unexpected rain hit Korea during the race. Ericsson made another critical error, and pitted for intermediates just before it was announced that the rain would stop in less than five minutes. Despite having to pit again and serving a drive-through penalty for causing a collision during wet conditions, he managed to get on the tail of Schumacher, who was in 6th, on the last lap. Ericsson was confident on his newer tyres, and braked much later for a corner. He had to finish without a front wing for the second time in his career, though he still achieved 7th. This, again, was not enough to secure the championship. A perfect Indian Grand Prix, compared to now-runner up Romain Grosjean's 7th place finish, resulted in his second driver's title. Renault also won the first engine's title, with Red Bull scoring a 3rd and 4th contributing substantially to this. Despite another three victories from Marcus Ericsson, Lotus' three podium finishes allowed them to stay in the lead, and they won constructor's championship at Brazil. Results and standings : ''See also: Results table Final standings